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Statistics

Although there wasn't data in the 2001 or the 2011 census on adherence to individual Christian denominations, since they were asked only in the Scottish and in the Northern Irish Censuses and not in England and Wales,[2] using the same principle as applied in the 2001 census, a survey carried out in the end of 2008 by Ipsos MORI and based on a scientifically robust sample, found the population of England and Wales to be 47.0% affiliated with the Church of England, which is also the state church, 9.6% with the Roman Catholic Church and 8.7% were other Christians, mainly Free churchProtestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians. 4.8% were Muslim, 3.4% were members of other religions, 5.3% were Agnostics, 6.8% were Atheists and 15.0% were not sure about their religious affiliation or refused to answer to the question.[3]

The Free Church of England is another Anglican denomination which separated from the Church of England in the 19th century in opposition to shifts in doctrine and ceremony that brought the established church closer to Roman Catholicism. The Free Church is in communion with the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States and Canada.

Methodism developed from the 18th century onwards. The Methodist revival was started in England by a group of men including John Wesley and his younger brother Charles as a movement within the Church of England, but developed as a separate denomination after John Wesley's death. The primary church in England is the Methodist Church of Great Britain. The Salvation Army dates back to 1865, when it was founded in East London by William and Catherine Booth. Its international headquarters are still in London, near St Paul's Cathedral. There is one Mennonite congregation in England, the Wood Green Mennonite Church in London.[17]

The Cathedral of the Dormition of the Most-Holy Mother of God and the Holy Royal Martyrs in Gunnersbury.

Islam

According to the 2011 Census, 2.7 million Muslims live in England where they form 5.0% of the population.[1]

Although Islam is generally thought of as being a recent arrival to the country, there has been contact with Muslims for many centuries. One example is the decision of Offa, the eighth-century King of Mercia (one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms existing at that time), to have coins minted with an Islamic inscription on them--copies of coins issued by the near-contemporary Muslim ruler Al-Mansur. It is thought that they were minted to facilitate trade with the expanding Islamic empire in Spain.[23]

Muslim scholarship was well-known among the learned in England by 1386, when Chaucer was writing. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, there is among the pilgrims wending their way to Canterbury, a 'Doctour of Phisyk' whose learning included Razi, Avicenna (Ibn Sina, Arabic ?) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, Arabic ). Ibn Sina's canon of medicine was a standard text for medical students well into the 17th century.

Judaism

Until the 20th century, Judaism was the only noticeable non-Christian religion having first appeared in historical records during the Norman Conquest of 1066. In fact, from 1290 to 1656, Judaism did not officially exist in England due to an outright expulsion in 1290 and official restrictions that were not lifted until 1656 (though historical records show that some Jews did come back to England during the early part of the 17th century prior to the lifting of the restriction). Now, the presence of the Jewish culture and Jews in England today is one of the largest in the world.

Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith started with the earliest mentions of the predecessor of the Bahá'í Faith, the Báb, in The Times on 1 November 1845, only a little over a year after the Báb first stated his mission.[24] Today there are Bahá'í communities across the country from Carlisle[25] to Cornwall.[26]

Indian religions

Hinduism

Early Hindus in England were mostly students during the 19th century. There have been three waves of migration of Hindus to England since then.

Before India's Independence in 1947, Hindu migration was minuscule and largely temporary. The second wave of Hindu migration occurred in the 1970s after the expulsion of Gujarati Hindus from Uganda. Initially, Hindu immigration was limited to Punjabi and Gujarati Hindus, but, by 2000, small Hindu communities of every ethnicity could be found in England. England is also host to a large immigrant community of Sri Lankan Hindus who are mostly Tamils. The last wave of migration of Hindus has been taking place since the 1990s with refugees from Sri Lanka and professionals from India.
However, there is becoming an increasing number of English Western Hindus in England, who have either converted from another faith or been an English Hindu from birth.

Sikhism

The first Sikh Gurdwara (temple) was not established until 1911, at Putney in London.

The first Sikh migration came in the 1950s. It was mostly of men from the Punjab seeking work in industries like foundries and textiles. These new arrivals mostly settled in London, Birmingham and West Yorkshire. Thousands of Sikhs from East Africa soon followed. This mass immigration was caused by Idi Amin's persecution of ethnic groups in Uganda, with thousands forced to flee the region in fear of losing their lives.[]

Buddhism

Buddhist peace pagoda at Battersea Park, London

The earliest Buddhist influence on England came through the UK's imperial connections with South East Asia, and as a result the early connections were with the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The tradition of study resulted in the foundation of the Pali Text Society, which undertook the task of translating the Pali Canon of Buddhist texts into English.

Neopaganism

At the 2011 census 75,281[27] people in England identified as Pagan, doubling compared to the figures of the 2001 census. Paganism in England is dominated by Wicca, founded in England itself, the modern movement of Druidry, and forms of Heathenry.

Wicca

Wicca was developed in England in the first half of the 20th century.[28] Although it had various terms in the past, from the 1960s onward the name of the religion was normalised to Wicca.[29]

Heathenism

Germanic Heathenism in Britain is primarily present in two forms: Odinism, an international Germanic movement and Anglo-Saxon Heathenry, Esetroth or Fyrnsidu (Old English: "Ancient Custom"), a movement represented by independent kindreds characterised by a focus on local folklore as the source for the reconstruction of the ethnic religion of the English people. With recent efforts to establish their own media influence through the agency English News. Both Odinism and Esetroth draw inspiration from the Anglo-Saxon identity and culture of England, with almost no difference between them, other than in terminology and organisation, with Esetroth movements having experienced a recent prominence and motivation.

The Odinic Rite (OR) was founded in 1973 under the influence of Else Christensen's Odinist Study Group (Odinist Fellowship). In 1988 the Odinic Rite became the first polytheistic religious organisation to be granted "Registered Charity" status in the United Kingdom.

Various independent Anglo-Saxon faith's kindreds exist such as the Wuffacynn of Suffolk and Northern Essex, the England-wide "English Esetroth" community organization, the Fealu Hlæw Þeod based in Hathersage and Peak District and the Þunorrad Þeod covering the Kingdom of Mercia. Folkish Anglo-Saxon kindreds have been primarily organising through "English Esetroth" since 2014 in a series of private gatherings. All the listed groups operate private moots, blots and sumbels, Anglo-Saxon kindred networking spiked in its frequency and web prominence during 2014 due to English News.

Historical religions

These faiths, all of which are considered to be pagan, have all been predominant in the regions that later made up England, though were all made extinct through Christianisation.[]

Gallo-Roman religion

Gallo-Roman religion formed when the Roman Empire invaded and occupied the Brythonic peoples. Elements of the native Brythonic Celtic religion such as the druids, the Celtic priestly caste who were believed to originate in Britain,[33] were outlawed by Claudius,[34] and in 61 they vainly defended their sacred groves from destruction by the Romans on the island of Mona (Anglesey).[35] However, under Roman rule the Britons continued to worship native Celtic deities, such as Ancasta, but often conflated with their Roman equivalents, like Mars Rigonemetos at Nettleham. The founding of a temple to Claudius at Camulodunum was one of the impositions that led to the revolt of Boudica.

Notable places of worship

The varied religious and ethnic history of England has left a wide range of religious buildings--churches, cathedrals, chapels, chapels of ease, synagogues, mosques and temples. Besides its spiritual importance, the religious architecture includes buildings of importance to the tourism industry and local pride. As a result of the Reformation, the ancient cathedrals remained in the possession of the then-established churches, while most Roman Catholic churches date from Victorian times or are of more recent construction (in Liverpool the ultra-modern Roman Catholic cathedral was actually completed before the more traditional Anglican cathedral, whose construction took most of the twentieth century). Notable places of worship include:

Irreligion

24.7% of people in England declared no religion in 2011, compared with 14.6% in 2001. These figures are slightly lower than the combined figures for England and Wales as Wales has a higher level of irreligion than England.[1]Norwich had the highest such proportion at 42.5%, followed closely by Brighton and Hove at 42.4%.[36]

^Eade, John (1996). "Nationalism, Community, and the Islamization of Space in London". In Metcalf, Barbara Daly. Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN0520204042. Retrieved 2015. The mosque committee was determined from the outset, moreover, to remind local people of the building's religious function as loudly as possible. As one of the few mosques in Britain permitted to broadcast calls to prayer (azan), the mosque soon found itself at the center of a public debate about "noise pollution" when local non-Muslim residents began to protest.